Apt error (tried other mailing list & Google), please help!
GuidoZ <[email protected]> Wed, 22 Sep 2004 14:59:20 -0700
| Newsgroups | gmane.linux.conectiva.apt-rpm |
|---|---|
| Message-ID | <[email protected]> |
Good afternoon. To save myself some typing, I'll just copy/paste what I sent to the apt4rpm-suse mailing list (http://tinyurl.com/4uzpv) ----- Hello all. I"m hoping this is a common problem that will be easy to fix. I"m mostly a Linux n00b, although I understand the basic ideas and system. Very well learned in Windows however. =) I recently (today) installed apt4rpm on SuSE 9.1 Personal. After a bit of tinkering, it was working pretty good (minus some odd 404 errors when trying to download the updates with "apt-get update"). I went through and fixed the sources.list to add some other sources, as well as other components (suser-rbos, kde3-stable, wine, usr-local-bin, suse-projects). It worked ok with these as well, aside from the 404 errors I mentioned before. (I"ll worry about those later - I thik I saw the problem.) My current delima is in the subject of this email. After doing some software uninstalls through YaST (removed the games, added some productivity tools), typing "apt-get update" simply returns the error: "E: Unable to determine a suitable system type". I did a fair amount of Goolge hunting, though not very much seems to be available. The result that looks the most promising (http://lists.freshrpms.net/pipermail/freshrpms-list/2003-June/004745.html thread) didn"t help much. The "solution" (http://lists.freshrpms.net/pipermail/freshrpms-list/2003-June/004761.html) doesn"t make sense to me, likely because I"m not exactly sure what it means. I know what a symlink is and how to make one (I believe), yet I don"t have the same situation this user did. (I didn"t change a thing security wise to break the original functionality.) I tried the "strace -o /tmp/apt-config.trace apt-config dump" to see if I could see the answer, but unfortnately it just returned the same error I"m getting. (Another reason why I think this problem runs a bit deeper... I suspect a missing config or lib.) So that"s my story. Anyone have any suggestions or need more info? Thanks ever so much. =) ----- I've been going back and forth with someone since I posted this, however we haven't been able to get anywhere. I honestly thought this would be a common/easily fixed problem, as it seemed like something that a n00b would run into, but a power-user would be used to. Any idea what I can do to fix this? As I told Richard, (the gentlemen who had been helping me thus far), the most frustrating thing is that it was working perfectly fine. All I did differently to cause this error was update the system using YaST. (Currently running SuSE 9.1 Personal on i586, AMD Athlon.) Here's the packages that were installed just before apt broke: glib2-devel-2.2.3-117 Sun 19 Sep 2004 12:30:42 AM PDT glib-devel-1.2.10-586 Sun 19 Sep 2004 12:30:39 AM PDT gcc-java-3.3.3-41 Sun 19 Sep 2004 12:23:53 AM PDT gcc-c++-3.3.3-41 Sun 19 Sep 2004 12:23:45 AM PDT libgcj-devel-3.3.3-41 Sun 19 Sep 2004 12:23:34 AM PDT gcc-3.3.3-41 Sun 19 Sep 2004 12:23:17 AM PDT glibc-devel-2.3.3-97 Sun 19 Sep 2004 12:23:07 AM PDT libstdc++-devel-3.3.3-41 Sun 19 Sep 2004 12:21:58 AM PDT libgcj-3.3.3-41 Sun 19 Sep 2004 12:21:44 AM PDT apt-0.5.15cnc6-0.suse091.rb.5 Sat 18 Sep 2004 08:17:48 PM PDT apt-libs-0.5.15cnc6-0.suse091.rb.5 Sat 18 Sep 2004 08:17:22 PM PDT wine-20040914-0.1 Sat 18 Sep 2004 08:15:19 PM PDT gwget-0.9-33 Sat 18 Sep 2004 08:13:16 PM PDT libgnomeui-2.4.0.1-171 Sat 18 Sep 2004 08:13:05 PM PDT libbonoboui-2.4.0-155 Sat 18 Sep 2004 08:12:50 PM PDT libgnome-2.4.0-153 Sat 18 Sep 2004 08:12:33 PM PDT bluefish-0.12-70 Sat 18 Sep 2004 08:12:15 PM PDT alien-8.43-67 Sat 18 Sep 2004 08:12:01 PM PDT xmms-plugins-1.2.9-52 Sat 18 Sep 2004 08:11:49 PM PDT nmap-gtk-3.50-71 Sat 18 Sep 2004 08:11:25 PM PDT gnome-vfs2-2.4.2-65 Sat 18 Sep 2004 08:11:14 PM PDT deb-1.10.18.1-28 Sat 18 Sep 2004 08:11:06 PM PDT unix2dos-2.2-222 Sat 18 Sep 2004 08:09:56 PM PDT tmpwatch-1.1-705 Sat 18 Sep 2004 08:09:37 PM PDT ted-2.14-190 Sat 18 Sep 2004 08:09:23 PM PDT pico-4.58-145 Sat 18 Sep 2004 08:09:08 PM PDT pdftohtml-0.36-112 Sat 18 Sep 2004 08:08:53 PM PDT nmap-3.50-71 Sat 18 Sep 2004 08:08:29 PM PDT make-3.80-184 Sat 18 Sep 2004 08:08:04 PM PDT libsap-1.51.1-514 Sat 18 Sep 2004 08:07:54 PM PDT libquicktime-0.9.2-42 Sat 18 Sep 2004 08:07:46 PM PDT kwebget-0.8-783 Sat 18 Sep 2004 08:07:33 PM PDT html2txt-1.3.2a-42 Sat 18 Sep 2004 08:06:36 PM PDT gnome-mime-data-2.4.1-64 Sat 18 Sep 2004 08:06:31 PM PDT gnome-icon-theme-1.1.0-83 Sat 18 Sep 2004 08:05:55 PM PDT gltt-2.5.2-464 Sat 18 Sep 2004 08:05:30 PM PDT gimp-help-0.0.cvs20040227-34 Sat 18 Sep 2004 08:04:52 PM PDT freetype-1.3.1-1150 Sat 18 Sep 2004 08:04:32 PM PDT flash-player-6.0.81-2 Sat 18 Sep 2004 08:04:29 PM PDT eterm-0.9-1038 Sat 18 Sep 2004 08:04:13 PM PDT dosbox-0.61-33 Sat 18 Sep 2004 08:04:04 PM PDT calctool-2.4.13-306 Sat 18 Sep 2004 08:03:53 PM PDT allegro-4.1.9-355 Sat 18 Sep 2004 08:03:33 PM PDT wipe-2.2.0-19 Sat 18 Sep 2004 07:19:33 PM PDT gdk-pixbuf-0.22.0-62.7 Sat 18 Sep 2004 04:33:04 PM PDT j2re-1.4.2_05-fcs Sat 18 Sep 2004 04:19:30 PM PDT gtk2-2.2.4-125.4 Sat 18 Sep 2004 12:53:47 PM PDT XFree86-libs-4.3.99.902-43.31 Sat 18 Sep 2004 12:53:12 PM PDT You can see the last thing I did before going to bed on the 18th was to try and reinstall apt using the original instructions I followed to get it working in the first place. (I included the packages on the 19th just in case, but it was broken during the updates on the 18th.) I would be happy to post more info if it might help - just ask. With Richards help, I've tried a number of things from test source lists, different components, even debugging. They all result in the same "E: Unable to determine a suitable system type" error message. =( As I said before, that's my story. Anyone have any ideas how to fix this problem? Thanks so much. -- Peace. ~G